How To Save A Life

Welcome to Cabin Camp 3, Prince William Forest Park! Welcome to cabins built in the 1930s by the CCC that have not been altered save but for electricity. In this luxurious site, one gets their very own dusty mattress and roommates like mice, wolf spiders and bob the rat snake.



I arrived on Sunday at around noon. Another person would not show up for another four hours. It was so hot and sticky I couldn't lay on the mattress or my sleeping bag because I would sweat so bad. And so I sat anticipating the people I would meet this week. In my head, they were all thin, tanned, tone granola-toting wilderness experts speaking a lingo all their own.

Of course, as everyone started arriving and introducing themselves, it became apparent I had the completely wrong idea. Were they outdoorsy? Like none other. But they were still... normal. How was this possible? With seven normal girls and eight semi-normal boys, we were the risk management program of the NPS and SCA.

As girls do, we all bonded and decided to forgo the "space" we were given with two cabins and six rooms for seven girls by all moving in together--four on one side and three on the other. The boys just couldn't understand why we would do such a thing.

The days started around 6:30 in the morning and we went until 10:00 at night. We were shoved from session to session in a never-ending stream of crash sessions on risk management and liability. The classrooms were cold and uncomfortable, but we were stuck for upwards of six hours a day in one. People would drop off during lectures, despite drinking their own body weight in coffee. The actual content of class sessions ranged from things like visitor injury prevention to risk communication. It felt like someone opened a fire hose into my face and wouldn't let up for air. Two things from training stuck in my mind, the first: our trip to DC. The second? Wilderness Medicine Essentials. We'll get to the second in a moment.

So for an activity the second night of training, after nine hours of classroom learning and information overload, we were all ready to get moving around. Despite some protests of DC locals, we loaded up the van in our new PRMP polos and headed off to the tour of the monuments set up for us (private tour!)


(us in the 11-person van on the way to DC)


(we got kicked out of the van so we wandered and took pics by the washington monument)



(the group listening to the park ranger talk about the World War 2 monument)

Some pics of touring DC:






The next few days passed in much the same fashion, and my brain really wasn't online until about 4pm most days. Staying awake was the most challenging part of this whole ordeal. It was powerpoint after powerpoint. The information was interesting, after all, it was about risk assessing in national parks. Potentially saving a life. It was just like a week-long powerpoint that wore us all down.

Now to the second part I mentioned earlier: We began CPR and Wilderness Medicine Essentials on Wednesday night and then did an intensive class all Thursday--almost nine hours. I'd never had any medical training before, so for me this was all new. We did scenarios, rolled people, bandaged people, wrapped people, splinted people, diagnosed signs of different illnesses, looked at bad injuries we could run into out in the backcountry.

So we got to the unit on head trauma. And stupidly, I volunteered to respond to a scenario involving some sort of head trauma with two other guys. We waited for our instructor to set himself up as a victim and then went to respond. As we walked up, a volcano of vomit explodes from the guys mouth. He's convulsing on the ground and there's spewing of something coming out of his face. All over. So we jump into action, a guy on his head, me up front by the face and chest, and another guy by the legs. The victim had massive head trauma and was alternating between seizing, vomiting and not breathing. It didn't matter what we did, we couldn't stabilize his airway and after about five minutes, I forgot this was just an exercise. Every so often I had to look to the side to remind myself it was only a scenario, it wasn't real.

I was supposed to gut the mouth. Reach my hand in his drooling-vomitting mouth and get the crap out. I didn't know what it was but it sure as hell looked like puke. There was puke in my hair, on my clothes, eyes, mouth, hands. At one point during a seizure he grabbed me by my shoelaces. Sufficient to say, I was pretty freaked out by all of this.

It was a feeling of complete hopelessness that took over as we watched him seize and continue to have erratic breathing and vomit (he had a ridiculous amount in there for such a small guy). When the scenario was up (who knows--ten minutes, twenty minutes later? Time seemed so slow) and he jumped up, it took me by surprise. I had completely forgotten this wasn't real and my hands were shaking, my legs were in pain from bracing him on his side and I was sweating profusely. What the hell had just happened??

I didn't sleep well that night, thinking of just how horrible that whole thing had been. Plus, no one likes being thrown up on. I'll post pictures of this when I get them--there are so many pictures of this guy puking on us.

On Friday, we reported out on our projects and had a closing session. It was bittersweet. It felt like a month, not a week, and I was sad to leave my fellow interns. We said our goodbyes and I overnighted myself to California, where I now sit waiting for my brother's graduation.



It was a week I'll never forget, for sure.